Just ask Johnny Depp.

A number of news sources and commentators are reporting this week on a University of Washington white paper criticizing the recent development of using automated processes (‘bots’ or monitoring agents) against BitTorrent and other heavy bandwidth users to generate automated DMCA takedown demands.  Many takedown demands are based solely on observed patterns of Internet use. [...]

My article “Enforcing Rights Against Online Infringers: Brandishing the Double-Edged Sword of the DMCA” is being published in the upcoming State Bar of Michigan Litigation Section Newsletter (Winter 2008). The article discusses the legal ramifications for rights owners in using “takedown” procedures and cease-and-desist letters under Section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. A [...]

In the last few weeks I’ve been updating and posting many of my articles on copyright, trademark, and domain name law from the old Arborlaw website. The Joint Copyright FAQ is the most updated article of the group — as 21st century creators rip, mix, remix, mashup, and scramble bits and bytes of content into [...]

Here’s an Infoworld item on Ed Foster’s Gripelog about those annoying email disclaimers. Should anyone use email disclaimers? Should everyone use email disclaimers? Are they legally effective? Are they worth it? I commented on the blog entry for Ed’s readers, but the legal issues are worth exploring on here. Email disclaimers as a form of [...]

I recently answered a commonly-asked question about the legalities of forwarding email. Forwarding email is very easy to do; the user just clicks on a button and types in an address and the entire email is sent off into cyberspace to another reader. As any user of the Internet knows — this is, as often [...]

Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University gives a highly entertaining and masterful demonstration of the copyright principles of fair use and parody in action — by explaining the basics of US copyright law in a clever mashup using protected Disney characters and other intellectual property (Disney is one of the entertainment industry’s biggest advocates of [...]

Oh the irony. This afternoon I just sent a DMCA takedown letter to “cease and desist” publishing my content to a Mr. Jerry Martin, who identifies himself as the person running the content aggregator portal at http://copyright.inventionanswers.com/?p=1986, where a complete verbatim copy of the RSS feed for the article below showed up online, less than [...]

Effective July 1, 2006, the US Copyright Office has increased the registration fee for most single works from $30 to $45. The new fee schedule indicates that the $45 fee applies to works which are registered on Form TX, Short Form TX, Form VA, Short Form VA, Form PA, Short Form PA, Form SE, Short [...]

Effective November 15, 2005, the US Copyright Office began accepting copyright preregistrations for certain classes of copyrightable works. Copyright preregistration is a development coming out of the passage by Congress of the Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005. Legislative history behind the Act showed that motion pictures, sound recordings, musical compositions, literary works [...]